Drown Upon the Sky
by The Hobbit's Rhapsody
Summary: Man was not meant to fly, but he could never resist the lure of adventure. And the sea was so still…  — First-person retelling of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, with some small details and interpretations added by myself. Oneshot.


**A/N: Line dividers mark the switch between Icarus' PoV (present tense) and Daedalus' PoV (past tense, italics). Begins and ends with Daedalus, though the majority of the story is told from Icarus' perspective. Reviews most welcome!**

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><p><em>Would that it had been raining on that day.<em>

_Would that I was not smart and clever, deft with my hands and soft with my tongue._

_Would that I could somehow have been content with imprisonment, with life._

_Would that man had never learned to fly._

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><p>The tower looks out over the sea. I had never seen the sea, not before the king of Crete locked my father and I away. It is a vast thing made of a century of hues of blue and green and gold and grey, capped in pearl and silver on the days when wind boils low over the land. But on the day we are to escape the tower, it is smooth as the looking glass that once hung in my father's room (a memory of my mother, Father says. I never met my mother). The sheen on its smooth surface looks like the sky, blue, with hazy wisps of cloud sailing across it. It looks so smooth that it is almost impossible to believe one could not step out and walk upon it. What would it be like to walk upon the sky?<p>

It is months now we have been imprisoned in this tower, for the goodwill my father lost from the Bullfather King. "I have been readying an escape," my father tells me, with the optimism he so freely bestows on his young son. He has been calling birds to our unbarred cell window with the crumbled crusts of the bread we are rationed, and they have given him their feathers in gratitude for the favor. Needle and thread he has in the pockets of his long blue coat, and wax, from the few small candles we are allotted so we may look on one another's faces at night. We only burn the candles on the nights of the new moon, though. My father has been sawing off the bottoms and melting those in the candleholders, so the guards who come to collect our empty ration plates and the candlesticks will not suspect that he has been stowing away the larger part of all the candles.

My father lights them now, and as the wax melts, he shapes it through the feathers dropped by the birds, binding the larger feathers with his needle and thread. I know by now to be silent and still when he is at work, especially with some stratagem which will get us out of this place and into the open at last. I can hear him muttering prayers to Athena under his breath as he sews.

"Wings," he says, as the sun peaks above us in the noon sky. The featureless sea below looks almost pure white under its glare, and heat breathes into our little cell in sweltering waves. "We shall fly into freedom, safe to the isle of Sicily." He holds up his contraptions for my inspection, and indeed—two pairs of mismatched, slightly tousled shapes which are roughly in the shape of wings—one pair almost twice the breadth of the other—are before me.

"Can we fly with these?" I ask skeptically. My father's hair—grown to his shoulders, now, black and lank—flaps as he gives a sharp nod. He hates having people question his work.

"They will carry us." He makes this promise with his best fatherly face. He doesn't realize I am old enough now to see through that mask. He fastens the smaller pair, still a good two feet wider than my armspan, around my ribs and to my elbows and wrists with some kind of harness he's rigged up of leather bands and more thread.

I am surprised King Minos let him keep so much thread, after it was a ball of his daughter's golden thread with which Theseus escaped from my father's Labyrinth after killing the king's Minotaur. But then, I've always found my father's blue coat curious. It seems there are a great many things which disappear into its pockets which cannot be found in them again by anyone but himself.

I stare at my newly fledged arms dubiously, but Father assures me again they will hold me. He straps himself into the other pair of wings and belts his coat as tightly around his body as it will go. He must be dreadfully hot in its cloth confinement, but he would never leave his trove behind.

He smiles at me, but his smile is pasty and thin.

There is a long pause as he looks down at me. We are two tallish, dusty, lanky forms with wings on our arms. We must look ridiculous. But Father is not thinking that now.

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><p><em>My son had grown taller since we were imprisoned. He was twelve when we got out of the tower, not far off from manhood. His mind was always so curious; I remember standing there and almost being able to see the gears and cogs chinking away behind that chary big-eyed face.<em>

_Even my own son, who had seen me work half a thousand inventions the like of which no man before me had ever dreamed, doubted that my makeshift wings would carry us from Minos' tower._

_"Think of it like an adventure," I told him._

_I meant only to erase the doubt from his gaze. I never meant him to be so consumed with that thought—that thought that tugged so easily at the hearts of young boys, because he was really still a boy._

_Think of it like an adventure._

_In a way, that's what it was—my inventions always were, of course—but we had to have our eyes set on the horizon. On Sicily. On our destination._

_But for all my lofty thoughts, my boy's eyes were always set higher. Had I only thought that out before I spoke those words._

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><p>"Think of it like an adventure," he told me.<p>

All right. I could do that. (Wasn't testing all my father's inventions a sort of adventure?) Adventure. Sky. Flying! No man had flown before, not of his own strength. We would make history! Adrenaline begins to siphon through my veins; excitement begins to hum through my blood.

Father kisses me before we go. Even behind the straightforward genius mind, Daedalus does care about his son. He tells me so, in words. I return the sentiment, though I don't think that vividness I see in his eyes is my own tears.

Then we both have our eyes on the sky. Testing a new invention—adventure.

My father's face fixes into the familiar concentration, determination, thinking out every detail of how this test must go. He speaks to me very deliberately, ensuring that he speaks every word rightly.

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><p><em>"Icarus, you must remember to fly the middle path. Moderation is key, my son. Fly too high, and the sun will melt the wax and your wings will fall to pieces; fly too low, and the damp of the sea will soak your wings and you will not be able to rise above it. Keep close to me."<em>

_The boy nodded firmly, and the excitement gleaming in his gaze reminded me that we were indeed making history. We would escape Minos for the safety of Sicily, and all men would hereafter speak of Daedalus, the man who was first to fly without first resting in the arms of the gods. We must just keep to a moderate height._

_Apollo, spare my son your shining lures. Poseidon, do not drag my son to your depths._

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><p>My father is the first to throw himself out the window. He vanishes from sight so quickly, I have to bite back a scream. Quickly, though, I spy him rising again, working his wings, until he is keeping a relatively steady course, a bit lower than the height of the window.<p>

He cranes backwards to look at me, and I step up on the sill. I try not to look at the huge thing between me an the ground, something that is a void, even if an invisible one.

Father's not falling. This should be a reassurance.

I fix my eyes on him, suck in a breath (Why? so I can scream as I fall?), and jump, flailing my arms with ridiculous panic even before my feet have left the stone sill.

There is a moment of sheer terror, when the invisible void between me and the sea grows much less with horrific speed, hot summer air shoving its way down my throat until I'm afraid I might throw up before I smash and die—

—My flapping wings catch on the air, and suddenly I'm gliding smoothly upwards. For a second I can't breathe, still choking over my fall, stunned by the sensation of true free flight.

Zeus! Flight! I start laughing, and for a second I think I might be a madman. Mad boy! There's a shepherd below us, in a bright virescent pasture to one side of the sea, and a man ploughing a field not much farther away. I want to laugh hysterically until they look up—look at the mad boy! The mad boy following his father who thinks he can fly!

But I am flying. Zeus, I am flying! The father of the gods has smiled upon us enough to let us taste his realm.

I'm still flying lower than Father—I fell farther and I must have reacted more slowly. I pump these things on my arms—wings! Actual wings!—and start to giggle again as I soar higher with amazing ease. It's so easy! It is fantastic!

By the forge of holy Hephaestus, it's blisteringly hot. The thundering, rushing air and the panic felt like ice when I was tumbling from the tower, but now I recall how truly, devilishly hot it is, without any real wind to stir the heat.

I wonder where my father is? I should have caught him by now, I think. After all, I'm lighter than him, even if everyone says he's thinner than the offering coffers in the temple of Hermes (because no one gives to the god of thieves but those who will steal what was left by those who came before them). I squint against the brightness—it's so bright as well as being so horribly hot—

Is that him? He's so tiny. So far _below_ me. Has he fallen? I grunt in worry, looking up so I can gauge where I am.

Apollos! The sun is so huge. I wonder what's happened to it, and then I remember than bigger means closer, and I realize my mistake. My father hasn't fallen at all; I have flown too high. No wonder it's so hot—

I have a brief moment to wonder when I'm going to start panicking, because I feel like I should, because I can feel my wings shivering under the strain of the heat, because I know by some terrible instinct that I don't have the time to fly lower—

The wax of my wings bubbles against my skin. The wings are dissolving around me! Already the smallest of the feathers have slipped from their harness, but I cannot see where they go because I am already falling, too, falling faster than the drifting bits of feathers in the suddenly breezeless sky.

My flailing arms will do me no good—I am only dragging against dead air, without wings to foil me against it. I stare up at the sun, at the face of Apollo, who has doomed me. I think I hear Athena crying out at her half-brother, rebuking him for the wrong he has done to those who plied their trade in her name. She cannot save me now.

I see again the faces of the shepherd and the ploughman beneath us, hear their thoughts: gods! There, flying above us! Gods, that we have seen with our own eyes. The true gods must surely have heard that, and this is our punishment.

As the sea rushes up to meet me, I try to scream for my father, but the looking-glass sky is already broken by my body, and my words have no force against the pungent liquid salt that rushes down my throat and into my nose, choking me.

—The pain flocks into my body a second later, agony wracking my neck and backbone. My limbs will not move! The fall into the sea—it had broken my spine! Zeus! I cry out. But I am no longer in his clear and free realm. No, I am drowning in the domain of Poseidon, who was always just a little bit jealous of the Father of the Gods, his younger brother, and fashioned the surface of his sea to match the sky. The sea drags me down, so much thicker and darker than the open sky, and—oh, it hurts—

Hades is reaching up for me. The god of the underworld rules a realm far beneath even the utter depths of this one…

_Father!_

_Moderation is key, my son…_

_…but Father, did you see me? I flew! Higher than anyone else could ever go. It was an adventure…_

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><p><em>I looked back for him. Icarus was the only thing besides the spot on the horizon that was Sicily which could draw my attention. Icarus, Icarus!<em>

_He was nowhere to be seen. I twisted, frantically, struggling to stay aloft, to not fly too high or sink too low—_

_Feathers. There was a ripple in the ocean, crowned with draggled feathers. Some were still floating down from the air._

_"Icarus!" The cry ripped from my mouth, and there was no one to answer—not anymore. Even the laymen on the ground below could not hear me._

_Sicily—safety—Icarus—_

_Think of it like an adventure._

_And the curious boy—the trusting boy, the fool boy—had gloried in the realm of Zeus, and sought to court the sun itself._

_Apollo had killed my son, and Poseidon had delivered him to Hades._

_When I reached Sicily, I hung up my wings. Invention…better left to other things that do not push the gods to their limits. Even I, even the great Daedalus, must see this now. Athena would not love my inventions any less, for though there was little love lost between she and her brothers, she could be jealous too. I thought of Arachne, cursed to spin webs as a spider after her weaving upon a loom had outdone that of the grey-eyed goddess. Even Athena had envy in her marrow.._

_No…invention was best left to things that would not infringe upon that which is the gods'._

_"Moderation is key." For all that I had tried to hammer that lesson into Icarus' capricious skull, it was I who had flown too high, this time._

_This was my lesson._

_Would that my learning it had not cost my son his life._


End file.
